What are your opinions on the latest "browser wars"

[daark.child]

Google recently released Chrome a webkit based browser that appears to have been well received. Internet Explorer 8 is turning out to be a decent release that has caught up with other browsers in terms of features and they are working on making it standards compliant by default. Firefox 3.1 should be out in a few months and it will have a new javascript engine called tracemonkey which according to the Firefox devs performs better than the current engine. Opera 9.6. Safari is also going strong on the Mac and they also have a Windows release.

As you can see from my comments above, there seems to a resurgence in building web browsers. What are your opinions on the latest browsers releases? Who do you think will be the biggest loser if Google Chrome is widely adopted? Will your opinions of IE change if IE8 turns out to be as feature rich as other browsers and is standards compliant? How about Opera, can they compete with Chrome, IE and Firefox? Will Safari for Windows convert people from IE and Firefox?

This is an open discussion so feel free to air any points of view or present questions other than the ones I asked above.

Personally I like Google Chrome because its very minimal and feels fast, but I have concerns about privacy and what data google can collect from peoples browsing habits. Firefox is still my browser of choice but on Linux, it feels a little bit sluggish (although 3.x is way better that 2.x and 1.x) when loading web pages or dealing with multiple tabs, so I would like to try Chrome on Linux and see if that performs better.

I tried IE 8 beta2 on Windows Vista and to be frank, its the first time I have been impressed with IE for a long time. Like Chrome, it has an option to browse without saving history, images, cookies etc (the so called porn mode). The tab management seems to be a bit better than IE7 and the interface has changed a little when compared to IE7.

I've not tested Opera 9.6 beta extensively, but so far I have not seen any new features, so it appears to be a bug release of 9.5. I really have no reason for not using Opera, but its just one of those browsers, that performs well, is feature rich and standards compliant, but is eclipsed by other browsers in terms of popularity.

[AutisticCuckoo]

Opera's main problem seems to be marketing. I've used Opera since version 5.12, and I've had it as my main browser for the last three years (at home, at work and on my mobile phone). There's no other browser that even comes close to the set of useful features Opera has. And yet it often shows only a 1% or 2% market share.

Chrome and IE8 are getting a lot of negative press right now, because of their spyware tendencies of sending lots of information to Google and Microsoft, respectively. More and more people are becoming concerned about privacy issues, and this may very well affect the popularity of those two browsers.

Firefox has a solid standing in the open source community and receives multi-million dollar backing from Google. It's a good choice for those who only need a very basic browser, or those who are prepared to spend time and effort on installing and upgrading extensions to make it more useful.

Safari has something of the same advantage on Mac systems as IE does on Windows, viz. that it comes pre-installed on every system. Unlike IE, it's a good browser, and non-power users probably won't feel any need to replace it with anything else.

I think Opera is the one that is most at risk, unfortunately. It doesn't deserve to be, and I hope it will struggle on. Whom else should their competitors copy features from if Opera disappears?

[GNU-Fan]

I made a strange experience about three weeks ago. Having been using FF2.0 since its release, I somehow felt that I like to alter the user agent string of it.
Done that, I browsed yahoo.com, and got quite a surprise. Although my browser didn't lose any of it's capabilities, I got presented a completely different site which was basically an error page (falsely) stating that my browser was not capable of displaying their content and I had to download one of the 4 supported browsers. There was not even an option to manually get through to the portal. They just insist that you use one of the browser they deem fit. I certainly know this is a lie but what would a person less tech savvy think of it?

I do not use Chrome for privacy reasons, but I certainly hope a lot of these users ran into pages which rejected them just because it had a new user agent string. And I am welcome every new browser because this way some of the designers might learn why it is actually more useful to obey to open standards instead of "optimizing for browser X".

[elija]

As a web developer, browser wars are never a good thing. Particulary if the wars are between incompatible browsers each trying to define a standard.

We should all code to the W3C Standards and then any browser that doesn't meet them will fade and die as more of the web becomes unusable.

Personally, I won't use Chrome as I have a problem trusting Google. Maybe I'm just being paranoid!

[kostasan]

I browsed yahoo.com, and got quite a surprise. Although my browser didn't lose any of it's capabilities, I got presented a completely different site which was basically an error page (falsely) stating that my browser was not capable of displaying their content and I had to download one of the 4 supported browsers.

This has totally changed!! I switched user agent to IE7 and i saw Yahoo prompting me to download Firefox 3
I believe that it is direct response to Google Chrome, so Chrome didn't do that much harm to Firefox after all. Chrome & Firefox are also opensource, so they may even merge in the feature(will it come with gecko or webkit, or both flavors???), if Google acquires Mozilla.
Opera seems to have grim days ahead, so they 'd better open-source it to survive and together with Firefox & Chrome amalgamate into THE ULTIMATE BROWSER!!

Oh, i almost forgot: bye bye IE, we will miss you

[carlosponti]

i wish it wouldn't be so much called a browser war because there doesn't have to be one if they all follow the standards. competition is good and needs to stay just competition.

[i92guboj]

Opera's main problem seems to be marketing. I've used Opera since version 5.12, and I've had it as my main browser for the last three years (at home, at work and on my mobile phone). There's no other browser that even comes close to the set of useful features Opera has. And yet it often shows only a 1% or 2% market share.

In my experience, the main problem with Opera, besides not being open source, is that they don't listen the users. Opera has been unusable with a dark color scheme for years, that alone is a very big problem for a person who works with it open a lot of hours each day.

Plugins are hard to setup and they break with every release (at least in linux they do). I know that propietary plugins are always problematic, with all the browsers, but opera is specially hard when it comes to plugins. That's a big concern for users as well.

Besides that, I will never use a closed source product to manage my personal information. So, I will never use opera or IE for any serious purpose involving my personal data, because I can't be sure what they will be doing with my data, or where will they be sending it.

As a web developer, browser wars are ever a good thing. Particulary if the wars are between incompatible browsers each trying to define a standard.

This is where a browser shines or dies for me. Opera has its own set of annoyances. The most problematic is always IE though.

I found khtml, gecko and webkit to be the less painful of all when taking this into consideration. Correctly written html and css stuff works almost 100% of the times exactly the same way in these engines, which makes web development easier and friendlier. IE on the other side is a pain, and requires lots of workarounds. The difficulty is that you need to make these workaround without breaking the correctness of the code, and without modifying the behavior of the page on the browsers that are correctly implemented.

Whether IE8 will solve this is something I won't know until I get my hands on it. I have very little faith, to tell the truth. It has not a good history on complying with standards. It's always been MS's play.

We should all code to the W3C Standards and then any browser that doesn't meet them will fade and die as more of the web becomes unusable.

That's an impossible dream, because most people in fact don't code, they draw webs like if it was in the windows paint program. They haven't any idea at all about what the w3c is or what's the difference between html 4.0, html 4.01 or xhtml 1.0 or 1.1. Not to speak about so much css power which is not used, and is instead replicated with useless javascript code.

In a perfect world, browsers would strictly stick to standards without implementing silly worksarounds for every possible paranoia that a dev might think of. Developers would validate their web pages under every possible situation (overall if they are dynamically generated). And badly written pages would be considered buggy just like badly written programs, and users would refuse to use such sites. In a perfect world, web sites wouldn't be wrapped into a flash container which makes it impossible to access them under any OS that's not windows under x86 and very few others.

But I disgress I suppose it's not a tragic thing, there are much worse things in the world to worry about. I guess that I will continue using firefox on the inmediate future. When it comes to browers, it's a matter of choosing the best amongst a bad bunch. The one that can do all you need a browser to do.

[elija]

Edited my original post. Added the silent N (ever should have been never).

IE8 is rumoured to be very standards compliant, but then so was IE7. We shall see when it is generally available. The problem then becomes having to test in IE6, 7 and 8 when you can only have one installed at a time

I remember and indeed am a veteran of the version 4 browser wars, Netscape Complicator versus Internet Exploiter. Bad times. JavaScript that basically had to be written twice, CSS support that we wished was merely inconsistent but could better be considered woeful! And then there was Opera which was different again!!! It was during these times that I began to have the dream of standards compliant sites. It's closer now than it was but there is still a long way to go. It may be an impossible dream, but hey we all need a little something to get us through the day

Slightly off topic...

Does anyone remember the blink tag in NS4?
If anyone answered yes and you used it in any way except this

Schrodinger's cat is <blink>NOT</blink> dead

Shame on you!

[daark.child]

Chrome and IE8 are getting a lot of negative press right now, because of their spyware tendencies of sending lots of information to Google and Microsoft, respectively. More and more people are becoming concerned about privacy issues, and this may very well affect the popularity of those two browsers.

When I ran IE8 beta 2, there were options to switch off the mode that suggested websites according to your browsing habits, so I am not sure if there is any other way for MS to collect a users browsing behaviour.

[AutisticCuckoo]

In my experience, the main problem with Opera, besides not being open source, is that they don't listen the users.

My personal experience is quite the opposite. I've reported bugs to Opera and they've been fixed in the next release. I personally don't care whether it's open source or not. While I do think open source is a great concept, I'm not fanatical about it, and I don't have the time it would take to study the source code of such a complex application in minute detail anyway.

Opera has been unusable with a dark color scheme for years, that alone is a very big problem for a person who works with it open a lot of hours each day.

Opera is the most configurable browser there is. If you don't like the default skin, just use one of the thousands of other skins available. I use my browser 8-12 hours a day and I don't have a problem with the default skin. I've switched to the Sand colour scheme, because I find it more pleasing.

Plugins are hard to setup and they break with every release (at least in linux they do).

I take your word for it, and agree that it would be a problem for many users. It's not for me, though, because I'm not interested in anything that requires plugins. In fact, I've disabled all plugins along with image animations.

Besides that, I will never use a closed source product to manage my personal information. So, I will never use opera or IE for any serious purpose involving my personal data, because I can't be sure what they will be doing with my data, or where will they be sending it.

Chrome is open source, yet it collects lots of potentially sensitive information. Do you have any guarantees about what Google may or may not do with that info? The browser may be open source, but the company that gathers the data is far from open. On the other hand, I've never heard any rumours that Opera are tracking their users' surfing habits.

This is where a browser shines or dies for me. Opera has its own set of annoyances.

So does Firefox and Safari. Have you ever tried styling a LEGEND element cross-browser?

I found khtml, gecko and webkit to be the less painful of all when taking this into consideration. Correctly written html and css stuff works almost 100% of the times exactly the same way in these engines, which makes web development easier and friendlier.

I always code according to standards (and adapt for IE later). My code always works perfectly in Opera and Safari, and 99.9% of the time also in Firefox. Gecko has some annoying float bugs, though.

IE on the other side is a pain, and requires lots of workarounds. The difficulty is that you need to make these workaround without breaking the correctness of the code, and without modifying the behavior of the page on the browsers that are correctly implemented.

You can always use conditional comments for IE, to serve incorrect code to that browser alone.

Whether IE8 will solve this is something I won't know until I get my hands on it. I have very little faith, to tell the truth. It has not a good history on complying with standards. It's always been MS's play.

Yeah, I'm not very hopeful either, even if they claim 100% CSS2.1 compliance.

When I ran IE8 beta 2, there were options to switch off the mode that suggested websites according to your browsing habits, so I am not sure if there is any other way for MS to collect a users browsing behaviour.

I haven't tried it myself, so this is only hearsay on my part, but from what I understand the question isn't exactly 'do you allow to let us spy on your surfing habits?' but something much more innocent-sounding and positive. Non-savvy users are likely to accept such a prompt.